Is the West considering 'land for peace' in Ukraine?
Defeats on the battlefield and US elections are said to have prompted a shift towards negotiations.
According to the Washington Post, although Kiev remains opposed, European members of the NATO alliance increasingly believe in ending the Russia-Ukraine conflict through negotiations, and this could involve territorial concessions.
The US and its allies have sent hundreds of billions of dollars worth of cash, weapons, equipment and ammunition to Ukraine since 2022, while maintaining that they are not directly involved in the fighting.
According to information published in the Washington Post on November 13, some European countries are now experiencing a “quiet but increasingly visible shift” toward a ceasefire that would leave Russia in control of some of the territory claimed by Ukraine, while still providing Kiev with some security guarantees.
The secret talks are being driven by the “bleak” situation on the ground for Ukraine and the prospect that U.S. funding could dry up when President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January 2025, the sources said. While public statements of support for Kiev continue, 10 current and former EU and NATO diplomats told the Washington Post that some countries are looking to “lay the groundwork” for peace talks.
One idea being floated is for Russia to keep the territories it controls, while Ukraine would receive a Western peacekeeping presence or other security guarantees, but not NATO membership.
“This is certainly no longer a fringe idea,” an unnamed Western official told the Washington Post, while a senior NATO official said that those who proposed “land for peace” were no longer considered “heretics” as before.
Among NATO members in Europe, “there are 50 shades of grey” about what a peace deal should look like, Camille Grand of the European Council on Foreign Relations told the Post. Meanwhile, no one knows what Mr. Trump will propose when he takes office.
The current US administration has been “rushing to provide as much military aid as possible” to Ukraine before that happens, according to the Post. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Brussels on November 13 to discuss strategy with senior officials from NATO, the EU and Ukraine.
Earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that “when the time comes, nothing can be decided about Ukraine without Ukrainians, nor about Europe without Europeans.”
This poses a problem for NATO, as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has rejected any suggestion of abandoning territorial claims or his so-called peace platform, which calls for Russia to surrender.
On November 13, Zelensky’s adviser Mikhail Podoliak posted on social network X that peace proposals from the West amounted to “peace by sacrificing victims” and did not present any “realistic scenarios that would force Russia to stop its aggression.”
The biggest challenge for the West, according to the Post, will be “adjusting its public messaging about the talks after more than two years of warnings about an existential threat to Europe” that have required billions of dollars in spending on Ukraine.
“That’s a big part of any deal we do,” an unnamed official told the Washington Post. “It’s never seen as a win for Russia.”
Moscow announced conditions for ending the conflict earlier this year, which included Ukraine withdrawing from all regions that voted to join Russia, “de-fascizing” the government in Kiev, and maintaining permanent military and political neutrality.
